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"Never," she murmured, voice lethal, "call me pretty again."
Ryu’s smirk was almost lazy, dark eyes unreadable. "Or what?"
She tilted her head. "Or I introduce you to your samurai ancestors sooner than you planned." She held his gaze. “And, Ryu?”
He raised a brow.
“You can shove your Zen shit up your ass.”
Bagh’s low chuckle rumbled in his chest. "You’d deserve it," he told Ryu. Then, to Lechuza, "But let’s not pretend he’s wrong about everything. I may be reckless, but Herrera deserves a knife, not a drone. He deserves to feel it.”
Lechuza’s voice was quiet but edged with steel. "To look one of us in the eyes before he dies."Sorry, guys. It will be by my hand.
"He doesn't deserve shit except a quick end," Ryu countered. "You two are getting sentimental."
"Sentimental?" Lechuza arched a brow. "You're the one who practically writes love poetry to your swords."
Ryu grinned. "Only the finest steel deserves poetry,hime."
She let the jab slide, shifting her weight slightly to keep her legs from going numb. "Bagh's right. The drone strike is unreliable. We have no confirmation without eyes, and the window for intelligence collection closes the moment we turn this place into a crater. If we go in, we get the kill, and we confirm it."
"We get caught in a firefight, potentially end up as mangled corpses feeding the ants," Ryu pointed out. "Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good bloodbath, but I'd rather be the one watching it from a safe distance."
Ryu snorted, and Bagh rolled his eyes, but his gaze lingered on her a second longer than necessary. That gaze, steady, intent, had followed her for months now, though he never said anything outright. Bagh was attractive. That couldn’t be denied. The sharp angles of his face softened by that shaggy, infuriatingly charming hair, the way his smile, dangerous as it was, seemed so effortlessly easy. Too easy. Too impulsive. Too willing to throw himself into the fire because he trusted he’d come out on the other side. Attraction was a liability. She ignored it.
She sighed, refocusing on the compound.
It should be Herrera on her mind. The hunt, the kill, the justice owed for what he had done. But instead, Jae Shaw’s name rolled through her thoughts, slow and steady, like the taste of something dark and rich lingering on the tongue.
A warrior’s…what?
Whiskey, maybe. Burnt sugar.Something that should be smooth but instead burned its way down and settled in the chest, leaving warmth and regret in its wake.
Lechuza hated it.
Hated the memory of his steady hands, the way his gray eyes held hers in the dim light of the chopper, seeing her, not as a victim, not as a woman who needed saving, but as a warrior.
As an equal.
Flash, Jae Shaw, was all sharp angles and quiet strength, the kind of man who looked like he’d been carved from granite, all strong jawlines, broad shoulders, and a frame built for endurance. The scar along his cheek added to the danger, but it was his eyes, that storm-gray gaze, always watching, always assessing, that unsettled her most. His humor got her, too, the way he twirled a phrase, sharp, witty, and disarming.
He’d asked for her name.
A breath of a whisper, warm against her ear, the moment before exhaustion had taken her under.
She had given him a riddle.
It still rattled her. She had spent years as a ghost, a shadow moving through the world without identity. The Incas had believed that names were sacred, tied to the soul, never to be given lightly. A true name was power, a piece of oneself given away. To speak it was to trust. To be known.
She had given its meaning away, unthinking. Had she offered up her soul?
Why? Because for the first time in years, she had felt solid. She shivered. No man ever made her shiver.
Her scowl deepened. Lechuza inhaled sharply, forcing herself back into the present. The jungle around them was thick with tension, the scent of damp earth and vegetation mixing with the faint, metallic tang of their gear. A few meters away, a jaguar slinked through the trees, its golden eyes reflecting the faintest hint of moonlight before it disappeared into the underbrush. Silent. Deadly, and completely unaware of them.
Ryu watched her, like he could see the war in her head. He didn’t comment, but something in his gaze shifted, an acknowledgment.
A mosquito whined near her ear. Lechuza ignored it, adjusting her rifle a fraction as the wind shifted. The jungle never truly slept, it breathed, pulsed, watched.